For various reasons I hope to write about in the future, most amateur players string their rackets too tight. As noted previously, the average string tension for the rackets I strung at the NCAA tournament last month was 53.3 pounds.
Of course, there is no single “correct” tension for any particular string, racket, or player — or combination thereof. As at the NCAAs, at the ITF Pro Circuit Futures of Winston-Salem I saw a 20 pound range from the loosest strung racket (42 pounds) to the tightest (62 pounds).
But looking at the average string tension over a large number of rackets can be instructive. So, I was interested to find the following for the string tensions I recorded at the Futures of Winston-Salem:
- Mean = 52.94
- Median = 53
This is very close to the 53.3 pound average tension I recorded for the rackets I did at the NCAA tournament.
I estimate that this 53 pound average is about 5 pounds looser than the average string tension for my amateur customers, even those who use all monofilament strings.
String loose people!
